Main menu

Vintage Attraction: A Novel

“The best book I ever read. The only book I’ve ever read.” —Haruki Murakami (the pug)

Before Peter Hapworth meets Izzy, he knows the difference between Pinot Noir and peanut butter, but that’s about it. Lonely and frustrated with his academic career—as well as with dating—his life takes a sudden turn one night when he turns on the television. He’s transfixed by the woman staring back at him, a glass of wine swirling delicately in her hand—Isabelle Conway, one of the preeminent sommeliers in the world. There’s something about her. Somehow, he feels like he already knows her.

On a whim, he pitches himself as a guest on her popular TV show, and the two embark on a whirlwind courtship. But relationships require a delicate balance of nurturing and belief, much like winemaking. Hapworth and Izzy must navigate the complex mysteries of wine–and the heart–from glamorous social events and domestic tribulations in Chicago to the vineyards and rocky bluffs of Greece. Vintage Attraction is a rich and insightful novel by a literary talent.

“Fiction is often a few beats ahead of the accelerated grimace of reality, as Charles Blackstone demonstrates in this engaging novel about a celebrity sommelier and the hyper-articulate mensch who loves her. A quirky and original novel about love, wine, and marriage.”—Jay McInerney, New York Times bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big City; The Good Life; and The Juice: Vinous Veritas

“Charles Blackstone’s writing is as much the work of a winemaker as it is of a novelist; the prose evidences the same craftsmanship, the same inimitable personality, takes the same risks, and offers the same rewards in the end as some of the greatest vintages.”
—Burt Wolf, Emmy award winning host of PBS’s Travels and Traditions

“If you like pugs, wine, and Greece, Vintage Attraction is for you. It’s so post-post-modern it’s almost pre-modern. I read it on a stone tablet and loved every word.”—Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author ofSuper Sad True Love Story

“Vintage Attraction’s magic is that it brilliantly compares discovering wine to something everyone can relate to: falling in love.”—Belinda Chang, winner of the James Beard Outstanding Wine Service Award, author of the wine notes in Charlie Trotter’s Meat and Game and Rick Tramonto’s Fantastico! and Osteria Cookbook

“Egregiously charming.”—Austin Grossman, author of You and Soon I Will Be Invincible

Watch another book trailer in which Charles Blackstone and Alpana Singh drink wine and discusses Hapworth and Izzy’s falling in love with each other and with wine and how guys should make sure to button their shirts before dates.